GOODMAN: McCain is a man of contradictions

Sen. John Kerry and his wife Teresa Heinz watch as outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, flanked by Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. John McCain, reacts at the start of Kerry’s confirmation hearing to replace Clinton last week in Washington. (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS)

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LEE-ANNE GOODMAN

A Canadian friend asked me the other day who I’ve found to be the most fascinating figure in American politics since I arrived here almost five years ago.

Barack Obama? Marco Rubio? Chris Christie? Hillary Clinton?

None of the above. It’s John McCain, and more than four years after his unsuccessful run for president, he still never ceases to disappoint me.

Since that bid for the White House, largely remembered for his ill-fated pick of Sarah Palin as his running mate, the Republican senator has been a colourful, unpredictable, contradictory and often irascible presence on the American political stage.

Truly awful to Susan Rice when it emerged she was Obama’s No. 1 pick to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, he was also a white knight to one of Clinton’s closest aides last summer when some of his fellow Republicans accused Huma Abedin of secretly belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Capitol Hill has long been abuzz with rumours of close ties between Clinton and McCain — and the outgoing secretary of state is apparently not a fan of Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who switched allegiances from Team Clinton to Team Obama in 2008.

It has not gone unnoticed that McCain largely spared Clinton his wrath for months while accusing the Obama administration of a coverup in the Benghazi affair. While the pair clashed briefly last week when Clinton appeared on Capitol Hill to discuss her handling of Benghazi, McCain also made a point of telling the outgoing secretary of state that “we are proud of you” and that she’s viewed with “admiration and respect” all over the world.

McCain indeed has no shortage of friends and allies on the other side of the aisle. One of them is the new secretary of state, John Kerry — a fellow Vietnam war veteran who likely didn’t have any problems with McCain’s scorched-earth campaign against Rice either.

Indeed, McCain’s the kind of bipartisan chess player who’s particularly fun to watch. I sit in giddy suspense whenever I see him approach the microphones on the Senate floor or in the halls of Capitol Hill, never certain what he’s about to say. Will it be liberal McCain or conservative McCain? Compassionate McCain or callous McCain? Cheerful McCain or snarky McCain? It could go any and every way.

His presidential aspirations a thing of the past, McCain apparently no longer feels he has anything to lose. In an era when party faithful are expected to espouse pre-approved talking points at every turn, McCain refreshingly refuses to play the game and isn’t shy about criticizing his own party as well as Democrats.

He even called a group of Tea Party lawmakers “hobbits” last year.

McCain has also been an astonishing flip-flopper — “the Republican weather vane,” the Washington Post dubbed him this week — on one of the biggest issues facing Americans in the weeks and months to come.

Once a passionate champion of immigration reform, McCain did a jarring about-face three years ago as mid-term elections loomed. In a startling campaign ad, the man who once railed against any notion of building a barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border blamed home invasions and murders in Arizona on illegal immigrants, while urging federal officials to build “the danged fence” to keep them out.

Why? He was nervous about a primary challenge from an anti-immigration Tea Party candidate.

But now Republicans face years in the political wilderness thanks to the rapidly growing bloc of Hispanic voters who overwhelmingly cast their ballots for Obama in November. So guess who’s at the forefront of Republican efforts to push for sweeping immigration reform? An unapologetic John McCain.

Once adored as a “maverick” unafraid to stand up to his own party under George W. Bush, at best he’s only a part-time renegade now. Last year, he even voted against the type of major campaign finance reform he has long called for in a move that echoed his political schizophrenia on immigration reform.

He’s despised by some, on both the left and the right, for his wavering principles and backroom alliances.

But from a journalist’s perspective, he remains one of the most interesting and entertaining people to watch on Capitol Hill.